Zero tolerance

[O Really]

School administrators do have a tendency to try to take the "easy" way out of complex situations. Starting with their dealing with adolescents who are at the height of genetic rebelliousness by cracking down and tightening up. And ignoring that teenagers' physical sleep cycles are different from either adults or younger kids and they aren't built to function early morning. And creating frivolous and somewhat random dress codes. So they got themselves boxed in to the point that a gun or a picture of a gun is the same. That an aspirin is the same as a Fentanyl. You have to wonder if they know it's ridiculous or if they believe their own rules.

[Doug1943]

"...but one scholar stated that to get into Cornell University, if you're white you have to be in the 99th percentile of intelligence. If you're black, only in the 75 percentile."

That scholar would be mistaken on both counts.

Can you give me the source, or the reason you say that?

[Doug1943]

School administrators do have a tendency to try to take the "easy" way out of complex situations. Starting with their dealing with adolescents who are at the height of genetic rebelliousness by cracking down and tightening up. And ignoring that teenagers' physical sleep cycles are different from either adults or younger kids and they aren't built to function early morning. And creating frivolous and somewhat random dress codes. So they got themselves boxed in to the point that a gun or a picture of a gun is the same. That an aspirin is the same as a Fentanyl. You have to wonder if they know it's ridiculous or if they believe their own rules.

I think it's almost universally acknowledged now, that adolescents should sleep two or three hours later in the morning than they do. There is at least one school in England that accommodates this biological reality. (Some hard data here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463387/ -- the English study, which involved an actual school that altered its start times, with positive results, is reported here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/heal ... 72231.html).

This is one of several issues which seem to me to be non-partisan, and which if taken up could greatly improve society, and yet which no politician, much less a whole political party, has seized on. Why this is so I don't know. The only substantial reason for opposing it that I can think of with respect to later starting times for schools (and universities) is that it pushes the working day for teachers back by two hours, which might be inconvenient.

[Vrede too]

Can you give me the source, or the reason you say that?

Hilariously arrogant and presumptuous request given that you refused to source your factoid even when its veracity has twice been challenged. What is it that you're hiding about it?

[billy.pilgrim]

School administrators do have a tendency to try to take the "easy" way out of complex situations. Starting with their dealing with adolescents who are at the height of genetic rebelliousness by cracking down and tightening up. And ignoring that teenagers' physical sleep cycles are different from either adults or younger kids and they aren't built to function early morning. And creating frivolous and somewhat random dress codes. So they got themselves boxed in to the point that a gun or a picture of a gun is the same. That an aspirin is the same as a Fentanyl. You have to wonder if they know it's ridiculous or if they believe their own rules.

I think it's almost universally acknowledged now, that adolescents should sleep two or three hours later in the morning than they do. There is at least one school in England that accommodates this biological reality. (Some hard data here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463387/ -- the English study, which involved an actual school that altered its start times, with positive results, is reported here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/heal ... 72231.html).

This is one of several issues which seem to me to be non-partisan, and which if taken up could greatly improve society, and yet which no politician, much less a whole political party, has seized on. Why this is so I don't know. The only substantial reason for opposing it that I can think of with respect to later starting times for schools (and universities) is that it pushes the working day for teachers back by two hours, which might be inconvenient.

This is so very wrong. Teachers and teacher's unions have always steadily been pushing for schedules more adaptive to learning and school boards have always pushed back for cheaper.

The year after my county privatized school buses, the board stacked school start times to accommodate the bus company being able to make 3 runs with each bus. So what if 6 year old kids wait for the bus in the dark, have a 75 minute ride to the school each day and were home by 1 or 2, while other 6 year old kids don't start until 10 but home after dark. So what if the 18 year to goes to school at 7 a.m.

Now please explain how the privatization of school bus services, lunchrooms and the schools themselves is a, as you call it, nonpartisan issue.


The war on education has been very partisan

[Doug1943]

Can you give me the source, or the reason you say that?

Hilariously arrogant and presumptuous request given that you refused to source your factoid even when its veracity has twice been challenged. What is it that you're hiding about it?

Well, I know that Cornell used to be pretty hard to get into, like all the Ivys, but that was long ago. I assume that it's still so, at least for whites and Asians -- probably even more for Asians. Thomas Sowell said somewhere that you had to be in the 99th percentile for IQ if you're white, and the 75th if you're Black, to get in. But he didn't source this, as I indicated. It seemed a reasonable statement, on the face of it, but ... I would like to see the data.

No one has shown me any data. I would love to believe that some people here are so knowledgeable that I can just accept their assertion that something is so, without their having to back it up. I don't do that for Thomas Sowell -- about whom I'm critical (I think he's too dogmatic about the free market), but basically who is someone I respect a lot -- and so I can't do that for anonymous people posting online.

However, presumably you have some reason for believing that the 99/75 figure that Sowell quoted is wrong. What is it?

However, I understand that I may be intruding on religious beliefs, i.e. beliefs about fact that are sustained by beliefs about morality. If you try to present a Christian fundamentalist with evidence that the earth is billions, not thousands, of years old, he doesn't really think about your evidence. He fails the critical test of rational thinking, which is, for any factual belief you have, to at least entertain the question, "What evidence against my belief would make me change my mind?" For religious people, including people who think they are atheists, there are some factual beliefs which are actually religious beliefs ... i.e there is not even the theoretical possiblity of changing the mind. (These 'factual' beliefs are actually like moral beliefs, where 'fact' is not in play.) I don't like to upset religious people, so if you're one of them, don't read my posts.

But if your beliefs are genuinely factual, and you have evidence for them, I would be very happy to hear it.

[billy.pilgrim]

"...but one scholar stated that to get into Cornell University, if you're white you have to be in the 99th percentile of intelligence. If you're black, only in the 75 percentile."

That scholar would be mistaken on both counts.

Can you give me the source, or the reason you say that?

Did you give a source for your 75% claim?
Excuse me if I missed it amongst all the many words.

[Doug1943]

School administrators do have a tendency to try to take the "easy" way out of complex situations. Starting with their dealing with adolescents who are at the height of genetic rebelliousness by cracking down and tightening up. And ignoring that teenagers' physical sleep cycles are different from either adults or younger kids and they aren't built to function early morning. And creating frivolous and somewhat random dress codes. So they got themselves boxed in to the point that a gun or a picture of a gun is the same. That an aspirin is the same as a Fentanyl. You have to wonder if they know it's ridiculous or if they believe their own rules.

I think it's almost universally acknowledged now, that adolescents should sleep two or three hours later in the morning than they do. There is at least one school in England that accommodates this biological reality. (Some hard data here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463387/ -- the English study, which involved an actual school that altered its start times, with positive results, is reported here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/heal ... 72231.html).

This is one of several issues which seem to me to be non-partisan, and which if taken up could greatly improve society, and yet which no politician, much less a whole political party, has seized on. Why this is so I don't know. The only substantial reason for opposing it that I can think of with respect to later starting times for schools (and universities) is that it pushes the working day for teachers back by two hours, which might be inconvenient.

This is so very wrong. Teachers and teacher's unions have always steadily been pushing for schedules more adaptive to learning and school boards have always pushed back for cheaper.

The year after my county privatized school buses, the board stacked school start times to accommodate the bus company being able to make 3 runs with each bus. So what if 6 year old kids wait for the bus in the dark, have a 75 minute ride to the school each day and were home by 1 or 2, while other 6 year old kids don't start until 10 but home after dark. So what if the 18 year to goes to school at 7 a.m.

Now please explain how the privatization of school bus services, lunchrooms and the schools themselves is a, as you call it, nonpartisan issue.


The war on education has been very partisan

I'm not sure what you're replying to here. If it's about that school board doing the wrong thing re starting times, in order to accommodate a private bus company, than I would agree with you. That school board sounds like they ought to be shot.

In general, I believe education should be publically funded, and of high quality, which means paying serious taxes. You get what you pay for. No, that's not true. You VERY SELDOM get a quality product at a low cost, although you can often get a poor quality product at a high cost. We need to have well-funded schools, with good equipment, and above all with well-paid teachers so that we can attract some of the best graduates.

However, just giving the school systems more money in and of itself is definitely not going to be the answer. We need to look at what is taught and how it is taught. This is a complicated issue -- in fact, it's several overlapping issues.

I have to admit, I don't know a great deal about the ins and outs of American education, since I have not lived in the US for many years. I know more about the British system. Over here, the teacher unions hate the idea of schools that are not controlled by the local councils, and in particular, hate so-called 'Free Schools', an innovation of the Conservative Party a few years ago. These are state-funded, but independent. I suspect, but don't have enough information to argue about it in detail, that American unions would also oppose the idea of free schools. (I do think that the AFT, as opposed to the NEA, has sounder views on teaching methods. But the purpose of unions is to represent the interests of their members, not of the customers of the enterprises for which they work. That's perfectly legitimate. So I would pay attention to the teachers unions when they are arguing for better conditions for teachers, but I would not automatically assume that whatever they are for, will automatically benefit customers, the students. It might, or it might not.)

It would be interesting to have a good debate on education, so perhaps I will start a thread on it sometime in the future. I think it's a critical issue. I promise not to just rehearse right-wing talking points, assuming that there are some I agree with, but to try to back up my assertions with evidence ... in other words, to try to convince you of specific points. I myself try to keep up with leftist view on education, charter schools, etc. by subscribing to -- and reading when I can -- Diane Ravitch's website, which has lots of reports on the failings of current charter schools. (My own prejudice is that schools started by people whose main aim is making money are not going to be particularly good, and many stories from the charter school world seem to endorse that.)

Anyone interested in the issue of education will find three Wiki articles of special value.

(1) Project Follow Through, the only really large-scale study of different approaches to education, done at the end of the Great Society experiment, in the 1970s. Here is the Wiki article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Follow_Through_(project). If I start a thread on education, I'll refer to Project Follow Through and to the ideas of the late Sig Engelmann.

(2) The concept of 'Cultural Literacy', as propounded by E. D. Hirsch. You can read the Wiki article about Hirsch here ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._D._Hirsch ) and this section pretty much describes my own approach to education:

While the Core Knowledge Foundation in the US describes itself as non-partisan Hirsch himself is an avowed Democrat who has described himself as "practically a socialist" and "a man of the Left, the Old Left". Over the years, he has expressed deep sympathy for underprivileged minority youths and has stated that he specifically designed a curriculum to "place all children on common ground, sharing a common body of knowledge. That's one way to secure civil rights."

In The Making of Americans (2010), Hirsch explained his position as both a "political liberal" and "an educational conservative":

I am a political liberal, but once I recognized the relative inertness and stability of the shared background knowledge students need to master reading and writing, I was forced to become an educational conservative.... Logic compelled the conclusion that achieving the democratic goal of high universal literacy would require schools to practice a large measure of educational traditionalism.

Hirsch's ideas are very thinly expounded here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_literacy ). From the Wiki article, you wouldn't really get just how profound his critique of current education is, or why it has provoked such a hostile response from some quarters. But it's a start, if anyone reading this has not heard of Hirsch and 'Cultural Literacy'.

(3) Michaela Free School. The Wiki article is a brief introduction. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaela_Community_School ). It may not be clear from this article what an astonishing achievement this school has made, or why the Left in the UK hates it like poison. But it's a start. I'll try to expound more on it at a later date, because I think it has lessons for everyone who is genuinely interested in raising academic achievement for the bottom half. [One technical note: 'GCSE'' exams are roughly the equivalent of final year high school exams, although taken at age 16 in the UK. One of the insane changes to education introduced by the Conservative government was to go over to a scale of 1 to 9 (that's right, '9') for measuring achievement on these exams.

I would be very interested in the experience of anyone on this forum who is, or has been, a teacher.

[Doug1943]

"...but one scholar stated that to get into Cornell University, if you're white you have to be in the 99th percentile of intelligence. If you're black, only in the 75 percentile."

That scholar would be mistaken on both counts.

Can you give me the source, or the reason you say that?

Did you give a source for your 75% claim?
Excuse me if I missed it amongst all the many words.

You probably missed what I wrote among all my many words, which was I don't know his source, but I have good reason to believe him, but one scholar stated that to get into Cornell University, if you're white you have to be in the 99th percentile of intelligence. If you're black, only in the 75 percentile.

So no, I don't know Thomas Sowell's source (perhaps I should write him and ask) but I would be willing to bet it's not far from the truth. Cornell -- long ago -- was well-known to have a negative 'Jewish quota', ie. it let in fewer Jews than it would have had it admitted strictly on academic grounds. (Probably all the Ivies did.) Now it's discriminating against other groups.

But if you support race-based admissions, what's the problem?

[Vrede too]

Did you give a source for your 75% claim?
Excuse me if I missed it amongst all the many words.

... No one has shown me any data. I would love to believe that some people here are so knowledgeable that I can just accept their assertion that something is so, without their having to back it up. I don't do that for Thomas Sowell ...

Ummm, that's exactly what you did, having "good reason to believe" his unsourced claim. Your projection is wussy, and stupid since we can all go back a page and see it.

However, presumably you have some reason for believing that the 99/75 figure that Sowell quoted is wrong. What is it?

It's ridiculous on its face - largely dismantled AA only works at the margins - and your and you now say Sowell's lack of sourcing are reason enough.

However, I understand that I may be intruding on religious beliefs, i.e. beliefs about fact that are sustained by beliefs about morality. If you try to present a Christian fundamentalist with evidence that the earth is billions, not thousands, of years old, he doesn't really think about your evidence. He fails the critical test of rational thinking, which is, for any factual belief you have, to at least entertain the question, "What evidence against my belief would make me change my mind?" For religious people, including people who think they are atheists, there are some factual beliefs which are actually religious beliefs ... i.e there is not even the theoretical possiblity of changing the mind. (These 'factual' beliefs are actually like moral beliefs, where 'fact' is not in play.) I don't like to upset religious people, so if you're one of them, don't read my posts.

Again, you are describing yourself. Sowell says something and according to you does nothing to back it up, yet you swallow it whole because it fits YOUR racist, perpetual victim religion.

But if your beliefs are genuinely factual, and you have evidence for them, I would be very happy to hear it.

Once again, you got challenged first and have now cowered from the challenge twice. there's nothing for us to debunk in that instance, no different than if you were screeching that you see flying pigs.

Anyhow, we now see how you react when you're confronted with actual sourcing like with your incomplete and racist 5%/50% whine, and that you stupidly try to change the debate like you did from post graduation (which has nothing to do with AA) racist America to a debate about admissions when you're floundering. You seem to be lacking in intellect and integrity, so what's the point?

[billy.pilgrim]

"...but one scholar stated that to get into Cornell University, if you're white you have to be in the 99th percentile of intelligence. If you're black, only in the 75 percentile."

That scholar would be mistaken on both counts.

Can you give me the source, or the reason you say that?

Did you give a source for your 75% claim?
Excuse me if I missed it amongst all the many words.

You probably missed what I wrote among all my many words, which was I don't know his source, but I have good reason to believe him, but one scholar stated that to get into Cornell University, if you're white you have to be in the 99th percentile of intelligence. If you're black, only in the 75 percentile.

So no, I don't know Thomas Sowell's source (perhaps I should write him and ask) but I would be willing to bet it's not far from the truth. Cornell -- long ago -- was well-known to have a negative 'Jewish quota', ie. it let in fewer Jews than it would have had it admitted strictly on academic grounds. (Probably all the Ivies did.) Now it's discriminating against other groups.

But if you support race-based admissions, what's the problem?

No I don't - mostly. I am capable of understanding what was done to black people - slavery, jim crow, separate but equal, back of the bus, no negros served (or educated) here, etc.
The world ain't black and white and sometimes you have to step aside from claiming that everything starts today.

[Vrede too]

I have to admit, I don't know a great deal about the ins and outs of American education, since I have not lived in the US for many years. I know more about the British system. Over here, the teacher unions hate the idea of schools that are not controlled by the local councils, and in particular, hate so-called 'Free Schools', an innovation of the Conservative Party a few years ago. These are state-funded, but independent. I suspect, but don't have enough information to argue about it in detail, that American unions would also oppose the idea of free schools.

I could be wrong, but sounds like our "charter" schools. We have found after many years:
Many have let their management being taken over by remote for-profit corps, anathema to the original idea of parent control.
They are accelerating segregation.
They are not achieving superior academic results and are often inferior.
Any apparent improved comparisons they crow about are the result of the overt cherry picking of students, or de facto cherry picking through things like access to transportation.

Oops, I see below that you're aware of this. Do they differ significantly from UK Conservative Party 'Free Schools'?

(I do think that the AFT, as opposed to the NEA, has sounder views on teaching methods....

I like the AFT and they detest "charter" schools.

It would be interesting to have a good debate on education, so perhaps I will start a thread on it sometime in the future.

Already done, 5.5 years ago: Education thread.

[O Really]

Ah, you got the 99/75 number from Thomas Sowell. It wouldn't be the first time he got his facts only with a few km of right. My guess - guess - is that according to some measurement, class standing, ACT/SAT, etc. the average is 99th pctle. And among some students under affirmative action standards (which considers factors other than only race), some may be admitted at the 75th pctle. But Cornell does not have or consider percentile of "intelligence" as an admission factor.

[Vrede too]

Ah, you got the 99/75 number from Thomas Sowell. It wouldn't be the first time he got his facts only with a few km of right. My guess - guess - is that according to some measurement, class standing, ACT/SAT, etc. the average is 99th pctle. And among some students under affirmative action standards (which considers factors other than only race), some may be admitted at the 75th pctle. But Cornell does not have or consider percentile of "intelligence" as an admission factor.

The Hoover Inst should always be regarded with skepticism, extreme skepticism when it apparently doesn't ID its sources other than as "one scholar". Is that like 45SHOLE's "many people are saying"?

[Vrede too]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but memory says that the black and white, no questions asked, no circumstances considered, zero tolerance bullshit started, or came to bloom, during the disastrous reagan administration.

Could be that I'm only blaming the repubs because this idiocy seems so republican.

Whenever it started and for whatever reason, this sucks:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/us/black ... index.html

...

Thanks for alerting us.

To: kboran@madison.k12.wi.us, board@madison.k12.wi.us, jbelmore@madison.k12.wi.us
Subject: Marlon Anderson

Dear Principal Boran, Madison Metropolitan School Board and Superintendent Belmore,

Re: An African American security guard asked a student to not call him the n-word. That request got him fired
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/us/black ... index.html

This is BS. Quoting the abusive student in a request to stop is specificity, NOT racism. This is one of the most egregious applications of zero-tolerance I have ever heard of. You have nationally shamed your school and district. You must re-hire, provide back pay for and apologize to Marlon Anderson. It is the ONLY decent and responsible thing to do.

Be better,
(Vrede too)

neoplacebo and the rest of the forum, Marlon Anderson needs you.

Cher offers to pay legal costs for black security guard fired after telling student not to use racial slur

[Vrede too]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but memory says that the black and white, no questions asked, no circumstances considered, zero tolerance bullshit started, or came to bloom, during the disastrous reagan administration.

Could be that I'm only blaming the repubs because this idiocy seems so republican.

Whenever it started and for whatever reason, this sucks:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/us/black ... index.html

"... He was reinstated a week later after a community uproar that drew national attention...."